The Main Death and This King Business by Dashiell Hammett Page B

against my shoulder.
    â€œWe’ll see,” I promised. “I’m to meet the folks at midnight. Maybe I’ll know then.”
    â€œYou’ll come back after the meeting?”
    â€œTry to keep me away!”
    X
EINARSON IN CONTROL
    I got back to the hotel at eleven-thirty, loaded my hips with gun and blackjack, and went upstairs to Grantham’s suite. He was alone, but said he expected Einarson. He seemed glad to see me.
    â€œTell me, did Mahmoud go to any of the meetings?” I asked.
    â€œNo. His part in the revolution was hidden even from most of those in it. There were reasons why he couldn’t appear.”
    â€œThere were. The chief one was that everybody knew he didn’t want any revolts, didn’t want anything but money.”
    Grantham chewed his lower lip and said: “Oh, Lord, what a mess!”
    Colonel Einarson arrived, in a dinner coat, but very much the soldier, the man of action. His hand-clasp was stronger than it needed to be. His little dark eyes were hard and bright.
    â€œYou are ready, gentlemen?” he addressed the boy and me as if we were a multitude. “Excellent! We shall go now. There will be difficulties to-night. Mahmoud is dead. There will be those of our friends who will ask: ‘Why now revolt?’ Ach!” He yanked a corner of his flowing dark mustache. “I will answer that. Good souls, our confrères, but given to timidity. There is no timidity under capable leadership. You shall see!” And he yanked his mustache again. This military gent seemed to be feeling Napoleonic this evening. But I didn’t write him off as a musical-comedy revolutionist—I remembered what he had done to the soldier.
    We left the hotel, got into a machine, rode seven blocks, and went into a small hotel on a side street. The porter bowed to the belt when he opened the door for Einarson. Grantham and I followed the officer up a flight of stairs, down a dim hall. A fat, greasy man in his fifties came bowing and clucking to meet us. Einarson introduced him to me—the proprietor of the hotel. He took us into a low-ceilinged room where thirty or forty men got up from chairs and looked at us through tobacco smoke.
    Einarson made a short, very formal speech which I couldn’t understand, introducing me to the gang. I ducked my head at them and found a seat beside Grantham. Einarson sat on his other side. Everybody else sat down again, in no especial order.
    Colonel Einarson smoothed his mustache and began to talk to this one and that, shouting over the clamor of other voices when necessary. In an undertone, Lionel Grantham pointed out the more important conspirators to me—a dozen or more members of the Chamber of Deputies, a banker, a brother of the Minister of Finance (supposed to represent that official), half a dozen officers (all in civilian clothes tonight), three professors from the university, the president of a labor union, a newspaper publisher and his editor, the secretary of a students’ club, a politician from out in the country, and a handful of small business men.
    The banker, a white-bearded fat man of sixty, stood up and began a speech, staring intently at Einarson. He spoke deliberately, softly, but with a faintly defiant air. The Colonel didn’t let him get far.
    â€œAch!” Einarson barked and reared up on his feet. None of the words he said meant anything to me, but they took the pinkness out of the banker’s cheeks and brought uneasiness into the eyes around us.
    â€œThey want to call it off,” Grantham whispered in my ear. “They won’t go through with it now. I know they won’t.”
    The meeting became rough. A lot of people were yelping at once, but nobody talked down Einarson’s bellow. Everybody was standing up, either very red or very white in the face. Fists, fingers, and heads were shaking. The Minister of Finance’s brother—a slender, elegantly dressed man with a